Ep 39 Mentoring: How to find or become a mentor

In this episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates dives into the essential art of mentorship—exploring how to find a mentor, become an effective one, and foster a successful mentor-mentee relationship. Discover key strategies for initiating meaningful conversations, understanding the different types of mentors, and setting clear expectations for both parties. Tune in to learn how to cultivate a mutually beneficial mentorship that inspires growth and drives success for everyone involved.

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Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody, and welcome into the 39th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. Now today, I want to take a little bit of time and I want to talk about mentoring. Now, I want to talk about this because I get quite a few emails every single week, from a lot of people asking me to be their mentor, asking for advice, asking to have a cup of coffee to take me out to lunch and everything in between. And that really led me to think that this is a subject that we need to talk about. So in this episode, I want to look at both sides of this coin. I want to look at if you're somebody who wants to find a mentor, if you want to find some more leadership, well, how do you find who that person should be? And then how do you actually go about asking them for advice? How do you start this relationship? And the reason why I want to talk about that is because in those emails that I get, I see a lot of people who make it very, very hard to actually help them. Maybe it's because they aren't clear on what it is they actually want. Maybe it's because they're making some pretty common mistakes about how do you start that conversation? So I'm gonna take a look at that. But then I also want to look at the other side of the coin, I want to look at, if you're somebody who wants to help those people, how can you become an effective mentor? How can you start doing it? or How can you keep doing it? Because I'll be honest, this is something that I struggle with to this day. Because how can I be effective? How can I genuinely help these people? But how can I do it without burning myself out? How can I do it by structuring this into a productive relationship for both of us? So today, we're going to look at three different things. First off, we're going to look at, like I said, if you're that person who wants to find a mentor, how do you do that? What should you look for and what are some of the mistakes you should avoid? If you're the person who wants to help people? How can you actually think this How can you approach this issue? That's going to make you a good mentor. And then finally, we're going to look at for both sides. If you're the mentee or the mentor, how can you set up this relationship to be successful? Now, I also want to say that if you're one of those people who thought, Well, you know what, maybe only half of this show is for me, I want to be a mentee or want to be a mentor, I would actually argue against that. Because I think no matter which side of that coin you're on, there's a lot that you can learn here. And I'm a massive, massive believer in that you always want to put the shoe on the other foot, and you want to look at it from somebody else's perspective. So today, we're going to take a look at both of those sides of the coin, and talk about mentoring. But before we jump in, I want to do just a moment of, well, maybe it's shameless self promotion, maybe it's just an ask for help. Because at the end of every episode, I say that if you want to, if you get something out of this show, if you find what it is that I'm doing here, useful if you shared it with a friend, if you actually look forward to the show. You've taken notes, if this has helped you somehow, in your career, then to do me a simple favor. It's the only payment I'm ever going to ask for. So just take a second and go to iTunes, go to Google Play, go to whatever your preferred podcasting platform is, and just take a second, leave a review, or leave a recommendation. It just takes a couple minutes. But it makes a massive, massive difference. Because we're trying to start a community here, we're trying to make things better for our industry, we the only way that's going to happen is if more and more people can engage in this. Now, that's what I'm really asking for is at the end of the day, I just want more people to have access to this content and the reviews. Will they do make a difference? If you have a chance? Just take a couple minutes and do me that favor because it does make a huge, huge difference. And like I said, for me, well, maybe that's why this fits here. This is me trying to mentor people, but just do it at scale. But enough about that. Let's actually talk about what we're here to talk about. So let's start with the first side of this coin. Let's start with talking about how do you actually find a mentor? What should that process be? What should you look for? And more importantly, what are some of the things that you should avoid doing? Whenever you're going about this process? I think that this should be a natural part of your career. Because it's natural to want to learn from people who are older than you and more experienced than you who are more successful than you. I personally owe a huge part of my success to the people who are willing to give me advice to teach me to mentor me, but for let's just start at the very basics. And that is, how do you approach people? How do you actually start doing all of this stuff? Because the problem here is that what's a tightrope to walk? And there are two kind of key areas that I think that you need to think about if you're going to actually try to seek out a mentor, the first one of those is just what should you look for in a potential mentor? It's just what are the basic things? Whenever you look at their work, whenever you talk to them, what should you be looking for? For me, on the most foundational level, I want to learn from people who just honestly have a willingness to share their skills to share their knowledge to share their expertise, because that's what mentoring is. And the problem is, is that some people will appear this way. They look like oh, no, I'm definitely willing to share but whenever it starts actually get into something that's significant. Whenever it starts to get into something that maybe they feel like a little proprietary, well, maybe they will want to share that. Maybe they don't. And I think that part of that also links to the fact that like, I want somebody who is going to act as a positive role model, I want somebody who's gonna have a positive attitude about things. I think that for me are just like two of the really basic things and it sounds so ridiculously obvious. But I see so many people who are in These mentor mentee relationships where it's just superficial. And that's not really what this should be because there are too many people who are just blinded by and I think this is something if you're looking for a mentor, you can't get caught up in, don't get caught up in just thinking that because this person has the experience or the achievements that you want, that that means that they're going to be a good mentor. Because it's not, that means that they have personally been successful. But it doesn't mean that they're going to be a good teacher, it doesn't mean that they're going to be good at sharing what they did in a way that's personalized to you, so that you can use it and you can learn something from it. That's really the thing is that it is about learning. If you just want to hang out with somebody who you think is cool if you just want to have another friend, Fine, go do that. But let's not disguise this. This is some sort of like a learning experience or not a mentoring experience, what you should look for, look for the basic sort of people who are willing to to share and invest but look for somebody Whose complimentary to you, but not exactly the same as you? If all I'm doing is hanging around somebody who thinks exactly the way that I do, who acts exactly the way that I do, I'm not really going to learn anything. And that's where we're going to have to fight just basic psychology, basic sociology, which is, you generally want to hang out with people who are just like you. We all do it. It's it's part of just human nature. But how do you think about this? How do you make sure that whenever I'm going to go seek out a mentor, that I'm not getting blinded by that, and I'm not getting so overcome with finding somebody who's just an older, more experienced version of me, because if I do that, I'm not really gonna learn a whole lot. I'm not really gonna grow a whole lot. And I think I think it's a model that can actually applies in a lot of our lives. But I think mentoring definitely brings it to life because it's so clearly about Career Achievement. But for me, whenever I think about this, I also just think about my wife And the reason why I think about this is because I think if I went back and I talked to my younger self, and I would have said, What are the characteristics? Write them down of who you think you should be married to? Who would you be happy? Who would you be successful? Who would you learn a lot from being married to? If I went back and asked my younger self to write that down, I can guarantee you was as somebody who's been married for almost 15 years been together my wife for almost 18 years, I can guarantee you that I would have gotten it wrong. Because I would have wanted somebody who was too much like me. Now what I needed was I needed someone who was creative. Absolutely, because I needed somebody who was going to understand my crazy I needed somebody who understood a creative process was but I needed somebody who was going to be different from me. I needed somebody who could bring in art and fashion and a lot of different perspective on things than what I had your mentoring relationship. really shouldn't be that different, where if you're what you're writing down, if what you're seeking out is just that older version of you, you're probably missing out on a big opportunity, you're missing out on the ability to get a different perspective, to learn and to do something different. So that's the thing that I would really say is, as one of the real kind of foundational things is that you want somebody who obviously has experience you can relate to you want somebody, what they're going to teach you is something you can learn from, make sure that there is some difference there because you want a broader perspective, you want the work to lead to growth, not just to another friend. But I touched on this a little bit before. But the other thing that I would say is to make sure that your mentors experience is real. That again, may sound kind of ridiculous, but as somebody who's been around this industry for a while as somebody who's known a lot of people who are considered smart or famous or influential or I don't know, whatever the adjective is you want to use to be able to describe them. The one thing that I can tell you is that well, I guess I don't know another way to say this, that may be any more sugar coated than this, but there are a lot of people who sound smart. But whenever you scratch below that Vernier, you're gonna find out that they don't necessarily know what it is they're really talking about, that they don't really understand this in a way that's going to help you come to life and a lot of different ways. I know way too many creative directors who couldn't open a file in Photoshop or sketch who don't actually understand what the real design process is. They just decide or they understand I guess, how to give an inspiration to their team and then let that team bring it to life. Those people for younger creatives for younger people, they're not going to do you a whole lot of good. I would just say, take some time. Look at the work they've done. Look at the things they've written look at the speeches that they've given and see if there is substance there beyond a veneer that is there. Actually tangible things that you can learn from because if I'm still in the very early stages of my career, if I'm still mimicking other people, if I haven't found my own creative voice, if I haven't moved on to leadership, if I'm suddenly mentored by somebody whose vision of things whose approach to things is too disconnected from that process is still too pie in the sky, then that may not actually be the right person for me, because that's where you want to make sure that it's more than just enthusiasm. And I think that would be the other thing that I would tell you to do is to make sure that the substance is real, to make sure that it isn't just enthusiasm. Ask these people have they been a mentor before wasn't successful? And quite honestly, however bold Do you think this might be? Would you be able to contact that person? Because you email them? Could you just have a quick conversation with them? Because you'd like to hear what was that experience? Like? What did they learn? How did this really go? And again, I think that some people feel like well, you know, whoever this person is that I respect, I could never ask them something like that. Just uh, it would be far too presumptuous. But let's be clear on something here. This is your career. This is your life. This is your livelihood that we're talking about. Don't get blinded by perceived fame don't get blinded by somebody's achievements. Don't let that overcome the fact that this is your life we're talking about this is your career. Because at the end of this, at the end of whatever it is, you learn, well, that's what you're gonna be left with is your life, your portfolio, your achievements. You know, this is a business but I've learned the hard way, way too many times. At the end of it too often, you're on your own to fend for yourself. So don't underestimate please don't underestimate the importance of vetting some of these things of taking the time to do this due diligence before you engage with these people. Because I see too many people who had really promising careers and I watched them get derailed or quite frankly even ruined, because they started working with the wrong person. They started working with the wrong mentor. They didn't do it. their homework they didn't look at, is this really going to be a good fit? They didn't say, Hey, is this person really going to be able to teach me something that I think is going to be valuable? So please just take the time, put in the thought, ask the hard questions. Because if this is meant to be, if this person is real, they're not going to be afraid of those questions. They're not going to be somebody who's instantly going to back away from it. The ones who are really good at this are going to welcome that. Because for me, I want to work with people who want to challenge me, I want to work with people who really want to do something different, who want to push me as much as I'm going to push them. It's the same reason, quite frankly, why like, I will never hire somebody who starts an interview by being a fan. I don't want somebody who's just blindly going to agree with me, I want somebody who's gonna push me. So make sure that you're that person. Now from there. Let's also take a minute just to talk about, well, what are some of the common problems that I've seen that I see quite a few people making? When it comes to the fact that, okay, I've found the person that I think I want to be my mentor, I found somebody who I think is a good fit. I've now decided that, hey, I'm going to reach out to this person, I want to start this conversation. And you know, the old adage of you never get a second chance to make a first impression. People say that for a reason. And I think this is one of those moments where that adage, where the rubber on that meets the road, because I do I get a lot of emails every week from people who've decided that I'm that person. They listen to the podcast, any number of different things, and they've decided that I'm the guy that they don't ask something for. And there are just some really common mistakes that people make that make it hard for those of us who are mentors to actually engage with them or to help them. So what I want to do is just take a few minutes of walking through, what are some of those mistakes? Because I think, yes, these are going to apply to this first conversation, this first impression, but they're going to apply to just the general mentor mentee relationship in general. And so I think that no matter what stage you're in, these are definitely things to keep in mind. And the first one is, and this I get this a lot is I get just emails or I get contacts where there isn't a clear ask. Now this happens when somebody writes something like, tell me how you became successful. Well, the problem here, there's not a clear ask here. And I think it's it's compounded really by the fact that whenever you ask a question, that's that broad, that's that big. The way that I'm gonna answer it, how did I become successful? The answer that are a series of things, a series of situations and circumstances that happened to me that happened because of my particular skill, set my particular makeup, those aren't going to work for you because your life is different. Your opportunities are different, your skill set is different. So that disconnect between those two things is going to render my answer pretty much useless in a lot of cases. All right, back to these people and say, look, I need you to ask me something smaller, that makes it easier to answer that makes it easier to start a conversation that something that's a bit more tangible that I can tell you or share with you or do something. So give me an example of what you're struggling with. And let's start there not making it this big, kind of vapid, you know, just overly expansive, sort of a question that really makes it hard for me to engage with you. Now from there. The other thing, which you can also see it a little bit in the first one, but the other thing that you'll see is I get asks where what it is they're asking is just too big. And this happens whenever people write me and they say, like, Okay, well tell me how to become a creative director. Or the other one that I got, and I just literally got this one this morning, is I get an email that is a list of multiple in depth questions. The one I got this morning, was literally three and a half pages. This is like eight and a half by 11 pages long and it was 14 In Depth questions. Well, the problem here is that the just the ask is too big. I can't answer it easily. I can't answer it quickly does the guy who wrote me this morning with the 14 questions, I want to write him back. I want to be able to share. I mean, this is the guy who reached out to me, I understand what he's risking and the courage it takes to do something like that. I don't want to be dismissive or disrespectful of that. But at the same time, as I read over what it was, he was asking me I realized it was honestly going to take me two or three hours to write this guy back. So the answer there is, it's just too big and and quite frankly, no email, no matter how well written is going to be able to tell him everything that he wanted or needed around something like that. So start with something smaller again, make it easy to answer make it easy to start the conversation and understand that you don't have to get all the information you want. All from a state single conversation, this isn't kind of a one and done one shot deal, you can actually take more time and just start with something small and easy to get the dialogue going, and then open it up over time. That's the problem is in many cases, the times when I don't write back, and I mean, there's another one from this week, too, that's sitting in my inbox, and I'm trying to figure out how do I find the time to do it. These are people that I want to help. But it's just simply I can't commit the time. And we'll also talk about, you know, really kind of understanding both sides of this relationship a bit more as we go through the show. But it's also making sure that if I'm going to spend two or three hours that this is two or three hours that's well spent, because that's two or three hours that I'm not spending on my job, it's two hours, I'm not spending on this podcast or with my family. I mean, that's the problem with all this is that we're all making decisions and those decisions mean trade offs. And I want to make sure that that time that I'm spending that it feels like it's actually worthwhile. Now, the next mistake that I see, and I mean, I guess this maybe isn't a mistake, but it's a problem that I see If whenever you reach out to me it feels like it's a veiled or like a hidden sell, or it's a hidden pitch. And this happens when I get something like, you know, look, I'd love to network with you about blank, or Hey, you know, I've got this really interesting, I want to do some knowledge share something like that, can we do a quick call? Those sorts of things, the way those that stuff is phrased often is feels like, it feels like you're trying to sell me something. I personally, and maybe this is just a me problem. I don't like veiled sales pitches. And again, I don't like people who waste my time, because that's one of those things where if you're going to be if I'm going to get on the phone with you under the guise of you or somebody who needs mentorship, if you're somebody who needs advice, and then this turns into a sales pitch, I'm probably going to hang up on you. I don't do bait and switch. I don't want to work with companies that will try to get one over on me and will do anything to get me on the phone. I would never buy a product that's sold that way. I don't want to work with a company or a business, who isn't honest, who doesn't believe in their product. Enough to let it stand on their own. Maybe I'm overly aggressive around that. But that's one of those things where it's just I'm not going to do it. So just make sure whenever you're writing this stuff that it doesn't feel like a sales pitch or that you aren't being too vague or pushing for something where I don't understand the value proposition. Now, the next one that I see and you don't see this one a lot, but you do see it come up, are people who are just quite simply too aggressive. And this happens when the person asking for advice or mentoring? Well, it should be pretty obvious they just get too aggressive or too persistent with their communications because look, of course it's fine to write and ask for advice to ask for mentoring. But here just you need to remember that people give advice and mentoring in their free time. And how much free time any of us have fluctuates. I mean, look, it's it's one of these things like when people write to me, I try to get back to them as fast as I can. I want it to though. Be smart. I want it to be thought out. Don't want it to just be dismissive to sentence answer, because I can do it quickly. I know these people are reaching out for a reason. And so I try to respect that I try to honor it. But here's the reality people like for all of us, there's sometimes when I need to travel, or I'm buried at work, I'm on vacation, or there's 100 other things that could delay my response, writing to say to me that I owe you an answer isn't the way to get it. I want to help people with anybody who is in a mentoring position, we want to help people. But we also want to help people who are humble, who are respectful, who are appreciative. So I would just say to remember to be one of those people in your reach out because this isn't a paid service. You're not cutting me a check, you're not my boss, and you're not giving me a paycheck and there is some part of it where it quite frankly, if you're gonna be an asshole about it, I don't want to help you because this is a favor and I am not in the business of doing favors for jerks. The other one that you get and again, you don't get this one too frequently. But this is where we kind of talked about the family boyfriend girl thing before but where that comes in, is that there are times when you do get communications that are just a little too personal. And this happens whenever someone will write to me and they'll say like, Look, I love your work, I love your house, I love your wife, Whitney, I love your two dogs I love, you know, the painting that you have in your living room or like whatever it is. And the problem here is that, like, Look, it's good to do your research I just talked, you know, at length about how you need to vet people how you want to not overlook something like that. But at the same point, don't make a creepy first impression. Think about what it would be like, and that if you were the recipient of that email, you would think twice about if you should write back to that person probably for a couple reasons, because of the way that they're engaged with it because of the detail that they're putting into that. So again, like this is a professional relationship if you want to be friends. Go do that some other way. Right? Like this is not the place to be able to do that. And the last one here that that is the problem and we've touched on this a little bit, is getting people who are asking for valuable information for free. And now this happens when you get an ask from someone. This is where they want advice. They want work, they want something that under different circumstances you'd pay for under normal circumstances you'd pay for. Now, this could be asking for you to do a designer to do a sketch, maybe give them a strategy suggest a brand positioning, tell them which typeface they should use, or it could be any number of these things. Sometimes, you know, I've been putting this vision, I'll have to go back and say, Look, I'm sorry. But if you want a brand strategy, well, then, you know, we can talk about what that engagement would look like, we can tell you what the cost of it would be whenever I rarely have the time to be able to do that sort of a project on the side. The person will either say, look, I totally get it. You're right. I'm sorry, I overreached. Let's talk about that. Or they get mad and they'll kind of say, look, you know, I feel like it's the least you could do with your expertise. So like, I'm asking you to help me out. And My only advice here would be if you're gonna ask for this sort of mentoring, if you're ready Ask for this sort of output, then you need to be prepared that people are going to come back. And they're going to say these sorts of things that they're going to give up this information for free. I with this podcast, I'm sure that I could put this into an audio book, or I could write a book or I could go to subscription service or like, there are ways that I could do that. If I wanted to get paid, I could do this, I choose to give this away for free. So people will use this information for free. We have this implied agreement. But there are other things like I said, that are more of where my expertise comes into play. And I know that that has a value and I'm not going to give that away for free. So it's just because there's this difference and offering to help it grow your career and doing work for free. You've got to be aware of where that difference is. What should you do? How do you start this? How do you make sure that you as a mentee are clear and can start this in the best way possible for yourself. And I will tell you that there are really three questions that you really need to focus in on. The first one, honestly, is and we've hit on this a little bit throughout the problems is just what are you Looking for mentoring on? What do you want help with? Is it your design skills? Is it your creative process? Is it your leadership style? Like what? What is it exactly that you want to help with becoming a success becoming a creative director, those again, they're they're too big and that they are too long term, often to have those to be successful things. Start with something small, start with something tangible start with something that will be able to be accomplished in no more than eight months. And remember, this is not everyday eight months, this may be you working on it every day for eight months, but this is not interacting with who your mentor is every day. But that that should be about the time horizon you should be thinking about is no more than that eight month period. And then really, what are then the goals that your mentor can help you achieve? And again, this is what I said, think about. This could be a lot of different stuff. Is it finding the job? Is it figuring out a career path? You know, is it getting critique or feedback on a particular piece of design or improving your creative, improving your portfolio getting ready for an interview, improving your creative process going from a full time freelancer, to a full time designer, I mean, any of these things, these are all really good goals. And then to the last part is also then just be clear about how much time are both sides willing and able to commit to this? Because this is one of the places where Honestly, I probably see this go wrong the most. Because as a mentor, we're going to discuss something and then I have an expectation this person essentially, is the same expectation I would have as somebody who's on my team, we've agreed that this person will go do something. Well, if I write next regularly scheduled meeting that isn't done, no progress has been made on it. There's no communication about that. I'm gonna get a little disappointed and if that keeps happening, I'm going to get discouraged and eventually it's going to fall apart. Well then it's the same point whereas a mentee if I know that I'm going to need this person's time, if I may need, you know, a fairly regular part of this person's time, and I'm not going to get it, well, then that's a problem too, because all of a sudden, I'm gonna be having this expectation this, you know, need for time that maybe they can't give, well, then I'm going to start getting frustrated, I'm going to start disengaging with that. So again, just to be clear that both sides that you know how much time you're willing to commit, because if you aren't clear on these three things, quite frankly, you're gonna be wasting your time, you're gonna be wasting the other person's time. And that's going to be a big problem. Now, we'll talk more in just a couple minutes about some of the other things you can do to help set up being successful. But I think, in general, those are the things you need to think about if you're going to be kind of a good mentee if you're gonna be somebody who's going to approach somebody for advice. Now, let's take a few minutes and let's look at the other side of that coin. Now this side of that coin is probably going to be a little bit shorter because as a mentor and being a mentor, If you're more experienced, you've been doing this longer, you have a better understanding of what goes into this process. And I really think that for those of you who are looking to be a mentee, like I said before, keep listening because I think there's some of these things that you need to know about what you should be looking for in a mentor. But I think if you want to be a mentor, you need to really take some time just to think about what are you going to do to get out of this? Because if your first motivation for mentoring is thinking about what you can get out of that, you're probably doing this for the wrong reasons, because in my experience, the best reason to mentor is because I want to encourage I want to support and I want to give back to the community. I mean, honestly, I just look at it as an extension of the work that I do on my team or on Creative Leadership. And for me, mentoring is done on my team, and it's done on a much bigger scale to this podcast, that this is a more disconnected a more impersonal way of mentoring. Because I'm trying to give broad summary kind of more sweeping generalizations or kind of points of advice, as opposed to, I'd be able to really dial it in if I had a one on one relationship with somebody, but I'm not doing this, because of what I can get out of it. I think that it's a nice byproduct when people write to me and tell me that it has an impact on them. But I don't you can't go into this thinking that that's going to be the main reason for this. This is one of those things where I want to help, I want to see people grow, I want to see them do better work. And you know, this is one of those things where I also think it is important as a mentor for you to decide a very important distinction, because I've seen that too many people head down this road to be a mentor and they take they don't take the time to think about the scale of the impact that they want to have. And I think that that was something that I struggled with for a while. Because really the here the question here we talk about scale is do I want to help one person or do I want to help many people This really goes back to thinking about what are your strengths? And what are your weaknesses, because I see too many people who start by helping one person only to realize that they want to affect people at scale, they don't affect a group of people, or vice versa. And I made this mistake. And I think that you owe it to the people who you are engaged with, to make sure that they get your best effort. And so I think that this is the thing you need to think about is, do you really want that one on one relationship? Do you want a personal relationship? Do you want to grow one person? Or do you say, look, I feel like I want to have a broader impact I want to have, I want to go after something bigger. And a lot of times you can just look at this in your current state of your career. Are you more drawn to the one on relationships you have on your team? Are you more drawn and more excited by the speaking events that you do whenever you're on stage or whenever you do interviews? Because I think that's an insight you need to pay attention to. Because if you want to do it at scale, then do this, have a podcast, go speak at conferences, do something but if you're more drawn to the one on one relationships that absolutely engage in mentoring. And like I said, it's mentoring both ways. But it's making sure that you are going to get what you want out of this. And that you are really kind of figuring out well, ultimately you're figuring out how do you engage with people? Because if you want to be a mentor, it's going to be tempting to say yes to everyone say yes. And the individual will say yes to the big talk, the big presentation, do stuff like that. But what you need to do, and this is something that I've had to learn to do, is to evaluate whether this person and what they're looking for really is a good fit. And is this going to be a fulfilling relationship for both of us? And how do I want to engage with that? Or do I even want to engage with that maybe it's somebody, you know, I'm fine, doing little engagements. But ultimately, I want to have an effect at scale. I think that at least I've found that there are and should be different levels of engagement. And so the different levels that I've come to us have been well, the first one is what we've been talking about it's email. This is one of those cases where I I am busy, I'm busy with work, I'm busy with traveling busy with the podcast. I know for me, I just simply don't have time to engage people in a one on one mentoring relationship. Also, for me, I enjoy effect at scale. I like helping a lot of people and letting putting the bit of the burden on them to figure out some of that stuff. But that's the thing for me. Whenever I do that, then the assumption for me is that I don't want to engage in one on one relationships, but maybe for somebody if you're somebody who does, and you see somebody who reaches out and you feel like you know what, I don't really feel like maybe this person is a good fit, or you just don't have the time, but you still want to help people and this is the same way I am. And that's the case where it's like, Look, I can answer a few questions over email to try to help them out. It's good for a few interactions, but it's not a good long term model. I don't kind of say like, Okay, great. Let's email back and forth for the next year. If you have the occasional question, great write to me, I'm gonna do what I can to answer. I'm can't be on demand. And again, it's also just email is not going to be a good forum for true mentoring. So I think that for me is kind of the minimum viable engagement model is just be able to say, Okay, look right in with whatever these things are. I'll give you the advice that I can and then if you follow up questions, a few of them, we can do that. Now kind of the middle ground for that for me is then if it's somebody who I feel like Okay, look, there's something a bit more here, the problem is more complicated. You know, they reached out in a way that I think I can be more helpful around, then it's doing a call or doing a meeting. And this is one of those places where I feel like look that I still I don't have time to be the mentor stuff like that. Or if I'm, I am interested in that individual engagement, but here again, it doesn't feel completely right, then that's the place I'm gonna use this middle step. And I'll be honest, for me, these are rare because of the fact that it's it's hard to contain them just mentally, usually for the mentee. So just being this kind of one interaction that they usually feel like it's the first step to something else. So for me, the case needs to be compelling it needs to be worth and again that there's a clear value exchange between What it is that we're doing so that I know that both sides of us are going to get something out of this. And then the last one for this, obviously, is that then this is the full engagement model. These are people who are a good fit, you've got the time to work with them, and I'm going to engage them in this mentoring relationship. But like I said before, take a few minutes to talk about the best way to make this work for both of you. And to really understand and to figure out, how can we be successful? Because this is just like any relationship? And I think it's probably why I made the marriage story that I used before, is because I think that for me, it these are relationships. So how do you maybe this is a good transition point? How do we actually set ourselves up then to be successful? How do we go through and say, Okay, look, what and let's start with like, what are the qualities of a good relationship? I think whenever I sat down to think about it, there are three things whenever I think about whenever I did have a good mentor mentee relationship, whenever I think about whenever people mentored me, there were really three things that we did that I think Felt like really worked? Well. The first one was, I felt like we both had a good self awareness. Now self awareness, not of just, you know, how he felt about things, but that we were both really clear about what are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? And that if we weren't really clear about what those were that we spent some time to sit down and think about this stuff, because it's important that both sides really figure out what do I want? What am I good at? What can I offer? And then what do I need? Because I have to figure that out if this is going to be successful, because if I can't define what I want, if I can't define what I need, I don't want to give to you. I don't know how to be successful. But I think also that there was a self awareness in a different way. Because you know that that other one is it again, hopefully should be obvious that to have a successful relationship, you need to know what you need and what you can give, but also self awareness to things outside of that relationship. The simplest one was just if you're the mentee Just think about things like not making your boss feel threatened that you now have a mentor. It's an understandable reaction that if I hired you, if I'm your boss, but all of a sudden, you're turning to someone else outside of that relationship, to grow to get something out of that because the boss isn't giving you something that you think you need. Again, this may sound very telenovela, it may suddenly sound like a soap opera. But this is what human relationships are about. So that there is at least that self awareness that there are elements outside of just this mentor mentee relationship that need to be thought about. And I mentioned it before, I think that the second thing that that really made it successful was humility, the ability to be humble, and we talked about this before that, you know, from the one side, put yourself in somebody else's shoes and be thankful for the time that both sides are investing in this, that if I'm the mentee that there is somebody who has probably fairly significant demands on their time and they're willing to take that time out. And it may not always be perfect. It may not always be, you know exactly what you wish it Was but there is a real investment there. And as a mentor that this is somebody who has come to you asking for advice that you need to understand that and respect it, and to be humble and understand what it is that they need and want. And I think that really goes to the third one. And, and part of it is just, you know, and maybe more emotionally than where we're going to get to initially, but just honesty, that being honest with yourself about what you can do, and honest with the other person, quite frankly, this probably falls a bit more on the mentor, honest with your opinions. And I would argue that this is gonna be the hardest one of all, because look, you're gonna get busy work is gonna rise up, life is gonna step in. And you've got to be honest about all these things from both sides. But you also have to be honest with people about how do you improve, I have to be honest with them about what I think I have to be honest about a lot of other potentially really hard conversations. And this is where mentorship in a lot of different forms mentorship as the boss of somebody at work mentorship, as in mentor mentee, but I think this is The crux there were so much leadership or so much mentorship, where so many things fall down. Is it the moment where I have to say what's hard, the moment where I have to say, What's uncomfortable, and I understand why because look, I'm, I'm somebody who's built a career, on being the person that was too often will probably say what other people are thinking. It is useful, it is something that people will lean on, they may even try to take advantage of, for the ones who don't want to do that very well. But you also have to make sure that you do temper it with the humility you have to temper it with understanding because I'm somebody who has also learned that it a little bit too easily become somebody who all of a sudden you're kind of an asshole to be married to you're somebody who's hard to be friends with or somebody who's hard to learn from. Because the honesty and it just becomes maybe a little too much. And I think that you know you want to be honest. But you also just again, you need to temper it with how can it be productive that's just honest, for honest sake and looking at and saying, Well look, I'm going to tell you But nobody else does. Yes, that has its place. But it also is something that you really just need to think about making sure that it's useful for that person. For those three traits, again, I think that's, it's useful, it's helpful, it's good. That's what you need to concentrate on. How can you get more? Or what can we do that's more tangible to be successful? What like more tangible things we can do to set ourselves up for success in this relationship? And so look, overall. And to do a little bit of a recap, let's pull a few of these things back together. One is to really think about what are the scope and the constraints? What's in what's out? When are we going to do this stuff? You know, what are what's that person looking for? What versus what are they not looking for? What am I able to offer to them? What am I not able to offer them to really make sure that there's a clear scope and a clear constraint around a lot of those sorts of things so that we know where the boundaries are. And so there isn't misconception on either side for what this is going to be that we're really clear to define what are the goals and what are the problems? What is the mentor mentee Who's coming to me? What do they hope to gain from this mentorship? That we're clear about setting a cadence? What's the frequency in which we're going to interact? This may change over time. But it's good to at least start by setting some sort of a rhythm, some sort of an expectation. The big one that I found that makes a huge difference is to have a shared online space. Go and use something like Evernote, go use Google Drive, but just someplace create a shared space where you both can share notes, inspirations, projects, files, films, links, whatever it would be. Evernote is a favorite of mine, just because I can use it on my laptop, I can use it on my iPad Pro, I can use it on my phone, I can leave audio notes, we can share in a whole bunch of different ways, and that the other person can then see that I've added things there. So it's a different form of engagement. No, it's not a call, but there's a place for us to have an easy exchange there that often is easier than email because email just gets buried. You know, you talk about people send it on top of your inbox. Well, I don't want that I want to space whenever I go there, I can see what's new, or I can engage with what's there. And my head is in the right space when I do it. And the last thing I tell you to do, maybe the next The last thing, the next, the last thing I would say is like, define what is success? This is true of creative projects, I think it's true relationships as well. How are you going to know that you're getting what you want? Or what you need out of this relationship? from both sides? what is success going to be? What is the time horizon? What do they What do you want to teach? What do they want to know? You know, what do you want to show them? What do they need to grow to, but define what it is that you want to set around those boundaries? And the last part is, don't be overly precious about this whole thing. Yes, set up a structure, start somewhere, do something. But as you are individual people, and what you want is different. You're going to need to evolve. You need to reevaluate the process, look at what's working and what's not, and do it on a regular basis. Don't be a slave to process and think that well, this is what we have to do. Your two individuals, you're trying to solve problems. You need to think about this stuff. And so I think those are The bigger overall things you can do to set yourself up for success, but also think about for each interaction for each meeting, what are the things that I want to do there. And wherever you do those, the things that I found to be successful first are whenever I'm going to talk to somebody have an agenda, write down the list of questions that you want to talk to me about, and send them over to me beforehand, so I can review them that way. It's just because my thinking is going to be crisper, the time is going to be more efficient, if we only have an hour, it's going to be better spent, because I had a chance to think about some of these foundational things ahead of time. The other one is also just to set a meeting length, so that I'm sure that I can get everything done inside of that time window. Don't just hope it's always an hour, I hope we'll get through it. Again, this is where the agenda and the meeting length work hand in hand. So if I know that there are four things that I want to talk about that needs to be 15 minutes apiece, and that at the end of each one of those I need to make sure that we're moving on so we get through everything. And this is again, we're both sides need to think about this and kind of commit to what this is going to be. And always always I mean, look, this is true for every business meeting. I mean, this is definitely true for these sort of meetings here. Don't leave those meetings without knowing what the next steps are. Spend the last few minutes just have a simple conversation about what our next steps gonna be, what are the action items, what are whatever the buzzword is you want to use, but like just where what are the things that we need to accomplish. And this can also be something where, if you're going through this process, and you're trying to identify who that person is, or even if you're already in that relationship, well, then there are platforms here that can also help. There's one that I've looked at, that I think looks very interesting, I'll be honest, I haven't engaged with it. This isn't a paid plug or anything like that. But it's called recreate, it's our E colon, Lord create. But it's a platform that really helps match mentors with mentees and vice versa. But I think also, if you're already in that relationship, it's a platform that can help facilitate some of those things. So let's just let's talk about what we talked about, first off, know what you're looking for in a potential mentor. Understand, take the time that who they are and make sure sure that they're gonna give you what it is you need, don't do the common problems when you're reaching out to them, make sure that you're really clear on what are the three key questions, what are the things that I want to get out of this and ensure that you're clear on that. So you're sure that this relationship will work as a mentor. And really kind of think about the best ways to engage people, you know, really focus concentrate on the three qualities of good mentor and mentee relationships. And to make sure that you do those steps, whether they're the bigger broader ones, or the ones for each individual meeting that are going to set yourself up for success. But that's really, to put a cherry on this whole thing is that at the end of the day, this is what all of this adds up to is what I mentioned before, is to make sure that both sides have a clear value exchange. So there is a clear understanding of what are both sides going to get out of this. Because time after time, relationship after relationship. That's where I've seen so many of these fall down fall apart is because one side was incredibly invested in this but then the other side just really wasn't And, and I mean, look, this is true of business relationships, it's true personal relationships, there's a lot of this stuff is gonna blend over into other parts of your life. Believe me if you want to, but I can tell you that it's true. I've had so many business relationships where I was really invested in some because I was trying to help a software company build their platform, and the software company was just, you know, looking to me to be in their next marketing campaign, not a clear value exchange falls apart. But I think mentor mentee does the exact same thing where it just really is this case where it's like, Look, you've got to be able to get clear on this stuff. You have to make sure that both sides are going to get what they want out of it. Because ultimately, that's where the can we grab a cup of coffee, can we go to lunch? Can I buy you dinner? falls apart? And quite honestly, if that's what your email is, that's why I've always said no, because I understand what you're going to get out of it. I don't know maybe this is too selfish or something like that. But I don't know what I'm going to get out of it. Besides investing my time and I understand for me, you know, that I do want to do, I want to help But at the same point, I want to help a lot of people, I need to help more than just kind of one person at a time. And so to give up, like I said before that hour, that two hours, it's time that I'm not spending on something else. And so if we can't be clear about what that exchanges, if we don't understand what's going on there, it's not really going to work. Please go out, seek these people out, try to help them and I think that more people who are on the senior side, look, you need to get off your ass and help this industry. I don't know any other way to say that. There are too many people who sit on the sidelines and complain about why things aren't better, but don't have the spine or the balls to actually go out and help people. You know, because it's too easy to sit on the sidelines and just bitch and, you know, I I'll be honest, I found it hysterical with my recent episode of the high resolution podcast being interviewed with that. How many people including some of some very large agencies, who should be very ashamed that the way that their leaders act, who just sit on the sidelines who don't watch the show, who don't engage and who just simply decide to troll people. I personally find it hysterical and sad. It doesn't bother me one Damn that for those people who do it, but you know what this is, the thing is that we need as leaders to be engaged in this stuff, we need to get off the sidelines, we need to be able to have a bit more of a blue collar approach to this stuff and get our hands dirty and roll our sleeves up and say, Look, this is going to matter. It needs to matter beyond just the next quarter beyond the next bottom line beyond the next board meeting, that we need to do it because people need help because our industry needs to grow because we have an opportunity that we need to take better advantage of. And that should be the bigger calling for leadership around mentoring. That should be where we want to engage not just sitting on the sidelines and complaining and holding information to ourselves. And thinking that this is still that era where knowledge is power, because it's not I believe, and I embrace the point of view that sharing is power, teaching other people mentoring other people that's power, passing on what you know, and not taking it to the grave. That's power. And so, with that rant, we'll call this episode to an end. And so look, if you want to find out more about this podcast if you want to look at related articles, if you want the show notes for this show is Just an easy way to be able to have a list of everything that I've talked about head over to podcast, Stephen Gates calm. I've done a lot of work to be able to kind of really make those show notes more robust and more useful. I said it before, I'll say it again, if you have the time, please make the time. Go over, go to iTunes, go to Google Play, go to your favorite podcast platform, whatever it is, please take a minute leave a review. And I get tired of being like the Charles Dickens character who's like, Please, sir, may I have another? If you have questions if there are things on the show that you liked, if there are additional questions that you want to ask, if you're looking for a place in a way to be able to engage with me on this stuff, head over to the Facebook page, go to Facebook type in The Crazy One podcast like that page. A lot of people are going there asking questions, I'm posting articles and other things that I find interesting, doing it multiple times a week so you can go over and engage with that. As always, the boys down illegal want me to remind you that all of us here are just my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. These are just my individual thoughts. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. I know that time is truly the only luxury that any of us really have. And believe it or not, I'm incredibly humble that you want to spend any of it with me. So hopefully you are going out there looking for somebody who can help teach you or you're going to go out and try to help someone who you can teach. But in either case, and until we talk next time, stay crazy.